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LynnAmowitz

After years of offering medical help to refugees, Lynn Amowitz decided she needed to solve the problems at their source: the human rights violations driving refugees from their homes. Arnowitz was deeply influenced by anti-Semitism she faced in the small North Carolina community where she grew up, as well as her grandparents’ stories of their suffering in Eastern Europe. She began her career in medicine and public health offering humanitarian aid to refugees in Rwanda and Zaire. But after a trip to Albania, Amowitz realized that providing aid to refugees did not fix the underlying reasons for the refugee problem. She joined Physicians for Human Rights as a Fireman Fellow in Health and Human Rights, investigating human rights issues and violence against women in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Refusing to choose between her work and her family, Amowitz brought her still-nursing daughter with her to Afghanistan, pointing out that the refugees she worked with lived under far harsher conditions. She continues her efforts to investigate human rights violations around the world.